After the Chemnitz conference, and the decision to call off the uprising, KPD emissaries were dispatched throughout Germany to carry the news. Unfortunately the one sent to Hamburg arrived too late and the plans for insurrection were already being carried through. On 23 October, 1300 KPD members seized 17 Hamburg police stations, and a number of barricades were erected in workers’ districts. The next day they issued a call for a general strike, which fell on deaf ears. For three days hundreds of brave Communists fought heroically against the police in the Barmbeck and Schiffbek districts of Hamburg. Eventually the insurrection collapsed.
The German Communist Party had been put to the test once more and had failed. It was a crushing defeat and a demoralizing blow for the workers who looked to them for a lead. Brandler was made the scapegoat and removed from the Party leadership. In March 1924, at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, the leaders of the KPD were blamed for the defeat in order to deflect criticism from the role of the Comintern leaders. It was years later, after his split with Zinoviev, that Stalin’s personal role in the defeat became apparent. In a letter to Zinoviev and Bukharin he wrote:
“Should the Communists strive to seize power without the Social Democrats, are they mature enough for that? If today in Germany, the power, so to speak, falls, and the Communists seize hold of it, they will fall with a crash…the bourgeoisie plus the right Social Democrats will…exterminate them. Of course the fascists are not asleep, but it is to our interest that they attack first…in my opinion, the Germans must be curbed, and not spurred on.” (My emphasis – RS)
There is no doubt that Brandler, and the rest of the KPD leaders, feared a repetition of the ultraleft mistakes of 1921, and therefore bent the stick towards the policy of the united front and the need gradually to win over the mass of the workers. But as the situation changed drastically, the KPD leaders still continued the policy of yesterday, rather than reorienting the party towards the new situation. But the leaders of the International, particularly Zinoviev, and Bukharin, had a duty to correct the mistakes of the German Communists. Instead, together with Stalin and Radek, they deliberately held back the KPD at the crucial time. Instead of drawing out all the necessary lessons, Zinoviev, Stalin and the other leaders talked of the defeat as simply an “episode”, and that Germany continued to march towards revolution under the leadership of the illegal KPD. While blaming Brandler, they reasoned that the situation in 1923 had been “over-estimated”. They managed to turn everything on its head.